I’ve been very vocal about my love of Makeup Monsters and their utterly fabulous liquid lipsticks. Not only have they been expanding those products, including new shades and a new “soft satin” finish, but they’ve started to expand their product offerings. And some of those new products come with some serious sparkle!

A few months ago, their launched their first highlighters: Illusive Lights cream highlight in two finishes, Ethereal (pearl) and Pixie (glitter). I’ve been eyeing them a while and just never got around to ordering until their Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale. I picked up 5 shades, focusing on some of the oddball shades that don’t really look like a lot of other things I already have in my collection. I’m not a huge fan of cream highlighters usually, as I tend to use a lot of powder face products and creams can be a little finicky with powders, so I figured having unique colors would make me more likely to actually reach for them!

Bottom Pic, clockwise from Top Left: Lorelei (Ethereal), Valkyrie (Ethereal), Ectoplasm (Ethereal), A Little Bubbly (Ethereal), and Glitterazi (Pixie). I’m not sure why I showed all of the love to the Ethereal finishes and almost totally ignored the Pixie finishes, but that’s how it all shook out! If I find myself using these, I might go back and pick up some of the pixie finishes and do an updated review later!

Lorelei is a shimmery bluish green; it almost looks like a combo of Valkyrie and Ectoplasm! It has a nice silvery shimmer to it as well. Valkyrie is a medium blue with a lot of metallic shimmer. This will not shock anyone, but Ectoplasm is my favorite of the five; it’s a gorgeous light pastel green with a silvery finish. A Little Bubbly is a champagne gold with pearl reflects. The one pixie finish, Glitterazi, is a close second favorite, with some opalescent sparkle.

I swatched them in a different order so I didn’t have all of the like colors next to each other: left to right are Ectoplasm, Valkyrie, Glitterazi, A Little Bubbly, and Lorelei. I swatched them over a base of Kat Von D High Voltage eye primer that I allowed to dry and then lightly powdered with the Too Faced Peach Perfect setting powder. The cream pulled on the base a little bit, but it didn’t mix with the powder as much as I expected. Of course, I didn’t have near the same level of powder as I do on my big old cakeface on show night, but I was glad that it didn’t immediately just cake up and make a clumpy, muddy mess like some cream highlighters I’ve tried. Ectoplasm is the brightest and most vivid, but all of the shades give a pretty good amount of pigmentation. Lorelei had the most trouble sitting on top of the powder and the color isn’t as consistent as the others, but I think you could build it up in laters if needed. Glitterazi, with the glitter particles, needed more of a tapping motion on top to even out the coverage, but it didn’t ruin the application for me. I don’t think I’ll become a convert to cream highlighter any time soon, but these are some good products that I’ll definitely play around with more. Also, you could use them as a color base for eyeshadow application, which makes even the wilder colors more practical in terms of regular use.

Your cheekbones aren’t the only place Makeup Monsters is trying to add some sparkle – they also recently came out with two waves of “Moonlit Metals” Lip Toppers. They started with a limited batch of the first round and most of them were still sold out when I made my purchase, but with new shades added for Black Friday, I was able to snag 4 full size toppers as well as a free mini topper in an exclusive shade that was a gift with purchase.

Left to right, we have Cleopatra (mini size), Confetti, Sea Nymph, UFO, and Soul Tear. Now, I love the colors that I got but the first complaint I have is that the swatches on the website are not very good at representing what you’re actually going to receive. All of the toppers are swatched over a pitch black surface, making them look darker and much more vibrant than they are in person. Check out the swatches HERE compared to mine above, and I bet you’ll have trouble matching most of the shades up. UFO was the biggest disappointment; on the MM website, it looks like a bright emerald green when in reality it’s a white base with a green/gold shift. In my swatches, it almost looks yellow! Now, there may be some people who just can’t wait to wear these over a pitch black liquid lipstick (like Make Monsters’ own Darkness Prevails, which one our first ever liquid lipstick Thunderdome!), but most will wear it over other shades or on bare lips, so these swatches are just not ideal (and, I would argue, a little misleading). I’m pretty good-natured (I know, hard to believe right?!) and I’m going to keep all of these, but they don’t really look like what I though I was ordering – except maybe Sea Nymph. I mean, blue is blue!

Having said that, I do like the way these paint on and wear. The base color is pretty sheer but goes on pretty consistent. If you want to try a lip topper but the Lime Crime Diamond Crushers or Kat Von D’s Everlasting Glimmer Veils are just too intense, these are a much more subtle wash of glitter and shine. Cleopatra was probably my favorite, and since it has an orange base color, I want to try it out over Makeup Monsters Citrine liquid lipstick from the Orange Kitten bundle. Confetti has a pinkish red base and an opalescent sparkle. Sea Nymph is light bright blue with lots of sparkly glitter. UFO is a white base with greenish/gold shift – it’s really pretty, but it’s just not what I was hoping for. Soul Tear is a girly bubblegum pink base with a purple/blue shift. They all have this kind of yummy cotton candy smell that I really like.

The lip toppers dry down and the glitter really does stay in place. If you don’t mind playing the odds a little bit on shade selection, I think these stand up in quality to the liquid lipsticks from the Makeup Monsters line.

It’s been fun to see this brand evolve over the last couple of years, with constant innovations in components and packaging and branching out into new product categories. Most recently, they added a line of vegan hair dyes to their catalog. These Monsters just keep at it and show no signs of stopping – and that’s just fine with me. Who says you can’t be a monster and still be glamorously gore-geous?!